of man, and that a nation is great or oth- man; for if we should fall below Mr. Ruserwise according as it has developed art kin in our reverence for architect or sculpcapacity. That, if it in any close degree tor, painter or cutter of gems, at least we represents Mr. Ruskin's actual thought, should rival him in regard for the poet strikes us as a melancholy exaggera- and the politician; but the Hebrew did tion, an exaggeration because much still more, and knew nothing of art save has been done for man by races with song. He sang the Psalm which lives little or no capacity for art; melancholy, forever, and to which the cold northernbecause such a faith must be accompa- ers turn, whenever they are beaten by nied with such terrible doubts of the con- fate, for help or the expression of their tinuous development of mankind. Save grief; but he built no building, devised possibly in music, upon which evidence, fine lines for no ship, proscribed sculp though far from complete, seems strong, ture, at least it is our individual belief it is doubtful if man progresses in art that Moses intended his order on the at all, and certainly he does not advance subject, just as Mahommed did, to be a at any calculable rate. Let the build-side-blow against idolatry, and never ers of Europe try to reproduce Luxor. practised painting; but all the same he No architect of our day, even when re- handed down through ages the torch of vealing the inner conceit which cynics monotheism, and reduced the teaching of say possesses all minds, and wiser men Christ to the form in which we now reattribute to so many, would say that he ceive it. The Roman, who gave to man hoped to surpass the builders of the Par- perhaps the most beneficent of all concepthenon, or the often unknown men who in tions not strictly religious, the notion Germany and France and England seven that life should be controlled by immutahundred years ago made their dreams ble law, and not by individual will, the concrete and visible in the finest Gothic | fundamental axiom which has made or cathedrals. The little knot of wicked derly freedom possible, — originated little Attic slave-owners, whom artists call for convenience "the Greeks," remain unequalled in sculpture, and may have been unsurpassed in painting, while Mr. Ruskin himself would scarify all who said that modern art had advanced upon the triumphs of the Renaissance. All over Asia art has been decaying for ages, till the Moor of Fez would hardly understand what his ancestor had done in Granada, till Indian Mussulmans gaze at the Pearl Mosque as if the genii had built it, till Persians buy old carpets as lavishly as we do, and till Chinese and Japanese confess with sighs that the old ceramic work cannot be reproduced. It would be melancholy to think art the test of civilization, even if we believed, as this writer certainly does not, that races reached their flowering period in art after long cycles of sterility, and that Greek or Italian, Moor or Japanese, might yet again excel all former efforts; for still there would remain the humiliating thought that while the mind is of limitless range, art must always be perfectible, that a time must arrive when man, having in that department reached unimprovable harmony, must needs despair of advance.

in art, except an architecture, noble, in-
deed, and enduring, but far less truly
artistic than the Greek; while the Ger-
man, who is marching to the top of the
world, who has done so much for learning,
and who, with his patience and his ideal-
ism, may yet solve insoluble political
problems, has for art done scarcely any
thing. It is doubtful if he has built
much; it is not doubtful that he has carved
and painted nothing of the first rank in
excellence. In music, indeed, he is a
master, but not the master he is deemed;
for much of the glorious work with which
he is credited is due to a race of guests
belonging to another continent,
the race
which, in its own land, never built or
painted or carved, though it sang songs,
whose sweetness remains still the highest
expression alike of melancholy and of
faith. The Swiss has no art, the Scandi-
navian little, (might we venture to sug-
gest that Danish art, after all, is coldly
imitative, Hellenism without the Hellenic
sun, Hellenism frozen ?) the Slavon none
at all; yet each has power in his own
way. It seems to us that a race might be
great and noble and most useful to man-
kind, might excel in thought and in sci-
ence and in laws, might teach us all deep
secrets of happiness, and make us all more
worthy to live on, and yet not possess that
special power of at once conceiving and
realizing beauty, which is the condition of
achievement in art; might, in fact, pass

away, leaving, as indeed the Hebrew na- | still. Is there not, indeed, though we tion did, no record of its presence, save a admit that here we wander into regions land cultivated to irreparable exhaustion, rather of the fancy than the reason, and a literature which was for ages a stim- something self-destructive in the highest ulus or a solace to mankind. There are art, as if it took out of men some virility, men in the world, great men, too, who as if the natures which could produce it, cannot comprehend the glories of form, which had reached the point where the or color, or combination; and many more accurate perception of harmony and the who, comprehending them, could not even power of realizing it became identical, begin to produce them; and why not com- grew first weary with their task and then munities too? They would be brighter, barren? The history of "art periods no doubt, and have fuller lives, and civ- seems to suggest that, which is not true ilize men more rapidly if they possessed of literary periods, at least, not in our the missing powers; but they may be modern world, and in the same degree. great and worthy of all study nevertheless At all events, this much is certain, that if still. They last, too, such communities; we take art as our guide through the labyas those with the high artistic faculties rinth of history, we shall pass over not have not always done. The Greek, whose only some of its noblest chambers, but bronze spoke and marble glowed, lasted some of the places where men are producbut a few centuries; and the men of the ing effective motive-power. Man is wider Renaissance, before whose work artists than art, as he is older than science, and despair, and Mr. Ruskin stands full of more enduring than culture, is, in fact, what is really the poetic spirit, though it for all his baseness, greater than the new suits him to use a magically arranged intellectual idols he is setting up for himprose as his instrument, fewer centuries self, and which are only chips of him.

TAMING WILD HUMMING-BIRDS.-A lady residing at San Rafael, one of the many pleasant health resorts of California, has sent to friends in London an account of the taming of two free, wild humming-birds by her daughter, who, under medical direction, has for some months passed several hours daily reclining on rugs spread on the garden lawn. "E. has a new source of interest," her mother writes. "The humming-birds have claimed her companionship, and manifested their curiosity by inspecting her with their wise little heads turned to one side at a safe distance, watching her movements, evidently wishing to become acquainted. To entice them to a nearer approach E. plucked a fuchsia, attached it to a branch of a tree over her head, and filled it with sweetened water. The intelligent little creatures soon had their slender bills thrust into the flower, from which they took long draughts. Then E. took honey, thinking they might prefer it, and filled a fresh flower each day. They would sometimes become so impatient as scarcely to wait for her to leave before they were into the sweets, and, finally, while she held a flower in one hand and filled it with drops from a spoon, the now tame little pets would catch the drops as they fell, and dart into the honey cup their silvery, threadlike

Refer

tongues. E. is delighted, and so fascinated
with them that she passes hours each day of
her resting-time talking to them and watching
their quick, lively movements. Although
these tiny birds are humming all day among
the flowers, two only have monopolized the
honey-filled flower, and these are both males,
consequently there are constant squabbles as
to which shall take possession. They will not
permit a wasp or a bee to come near their
honey flower, and not only drive them away,
but chase them some distance, uttering a shrill
note of protest against all intruders."
ring to them again, at the close of the rainless
Californian summer, in a letter dated October
26, this lady writes: "We have had threaten-
ing clouds for two days and a heavy rainfall
to-day. E. has continued her devotion to her
little humming-birds. Since the change of
weather she has tried to coax them to the par-
lor windows. They appeared to think there
must be some mistake, and would hum about
the window where she stood with the honey
flower and spoonful of honey, or they would
sit on a branch and watch every movement,
yet not daring to take a sip until to-day, when
at her peculiar call, which they always recog
nize, one ventured repeatedly to take the honey
from her hand."

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